


Strange Bedfellows: A Comedy of Assumptions

by Mad_Maudlin



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Humor, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-23
Updated: 2010-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-06 14:01:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 15,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Maudlin/pseuds/Mad_Maudlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Murder, mayhem, madness and Malfoy! Harry and Hermione face down an unexpected conspiracy, a possible nefarious plot, wild rumors and much, much worse to save their best friend from a terrible fate...right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rolling On the Floor

_"We all go a little mad sometimes."  
Norman Bates_

"WEASLEY! POTTER! GRANGER!"

"Oof!"

"Malfoy started it, Professor!"

"Did not, this oaf attacked me!"

"Liar!"

"Shut up!"

"They were trying to kill me!"

_"Liar!"_

__"We were trying to stop Ron killing him, Professor!"

Snape glowered at the breathless mass of student bodies in front of him. Hermione was very flushed and panting heavily; Harry still had hold of Ron's shoulder and his glasses were askew; Ron was scowling and had, with great trepidation, begun to probe a shiny purple bruise rising on his left cheekbone. Malfoy, sprawled opposite them, was pinching a bloody nose and glaring with utmost loathing at the trio of Gryffindors opposite him. Ron was returning it with special vengeance.

Snape glowered a bit more, then said softly, "Congratulations, Mr. Potter. You and your friends have cost Gryffindor ten points each. Miss Parkinson, will you please escort Mr. Malfoy to the hospital wing and see to it that his nose is taken care of?"

"I'll take care of his nose," Ron growled.

"Watch your tongue, Mr. Weasley, or I shall make it thirty each."

Hermione caught he breath. "Professor, what about Ron's eye?"

"What about it, Miss Granger?" Snape swept back to his desk.

The other Gryffindors glared through the greasy rafts of smoke filling the dungeon as Harry, Hermione and Ron got back to their feet. Or, at least, tried to; Harry discovered rather too late that he'd twisted his ankle in his haste to separate the combatants, and had to be helped to a seat. The Slytherins snickered at this.

"Honestly, Ron," Hermione whispered as they returned to work on their potions, "you're going to get expelled if you keep letting him get to you like this."

"That'd be fine, so long as Malfoy goes, too," Ron said.

She made an exasperated noise in the back of her throat. "You almost sound as if you enjoy rolling around the floor with that little ferret..."

Harry noticed that Ron got a very contorted look on his face, and did not respond.

When the lesson was over, Snape had made a satisfactory number of pithy comments about the quality of Neville Longbottom's Stupidity Serum, and Pansy Parkinson had returned to announce with great drama that Madame Pomfrey was keeping "poor Draco" in the hospital wing for the rest of the day, Harry and Hermione climbed to their feet (or foot) and prepared to visit the school nurse themselves. Hermione knelt down and performed a simple Binding Charm on Harry's ankle (now swollen to the size of a grapefruit) to make it less painful to walk on. When she was done, Harry picked up his bag and said, "Come on, Ron, let's go...Ron?"

He turned, and realized that his redheaded friend hadn't gotten up when the bell rang. Instead, Ron was leaning over in his seat, reading something off a crumpled sheet of parchment. He had an unhealthy gleam in his eyes. "Ron?" Harry prompted again.

Ron jumped to his feet and shoved the parchment in his pocket. "Yes! What! Huh?" He looked very rapidly from Harry to Hermione, ears flushing pink.

"We're going to the hospital wing now," Hermione explained gently, as if she were talking to a small child. "To get your face and Harry's ankle fixed."

"Oh! Right!" He snatched up his bag and marched right out the door.

Harry looked quizzically at Hermione. "Do you think he hit his head while they were rolling around down there?" She shrugged.


	2. The Unexpected Conspiracy

Ron inhaled his dinner like a vacuum cleaner, which was nothing new. He did not, however, take any second helpings, prompting Hermione to ask again if he were feeling well. "I'm fine," he said, scraping his plate clean. "I just need to get to the library. For, er, something."

"Anything I can help you with?" she asked-in Harry's opinion, rather too eagerly.

"No!" Ron said; then, more calmly, "No. I just need to, er, look something up. Should only take a minute." And he darted out of the Great Hall before they could ask any more questions.

"What is it with him?" Hermione asked, obviously fuming. "This morning he was dead on his feet, then he gets into a brawl with Malfoy and suddenly he's Mr. Energy."

"Maybe it's the adrenaline rush," Harry suggested. "You know, the whole fight-or-flight thing."

Hermione shook her head and picked sullenly at her broccoli.

Some time later they left the Great Hall, with every intention of returning to Gryffindor Tower. However, the moment that Harry put his foot on the first step to head upstairs, he heard someone behind him say, _"Pssst!"_

__They both froze. Without turning his head, Harry said, "Hermione, did somebody just say 'pssst'?" She nodded, brow furrowed.

A gravelly voice from the same general direction asked anxiously, "Did I pronounce it wrong?"

Harry slowly turned around. There, trying unsuccessfully to hide in the shadows, were Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle. He thought they looked strangely naked without Malfoy standing before them in all his ferret-faced gory; he then pushed that thought violently out of his head, before he could be traumatized by the image of Crabbe and Goyle naked. Hermione swallowed very hard beside him. "Can we help you?" she asked evenly.

Goyle nudged Crabbe's arm, apparently indicated he was supposed to speak. Crabbe just stared at him. Goyle tried to nudge him again, but when Crabbe didn't get the hint, Goyle just punched him. Crabbe blinked rapidly and turned to Harry and Hermione. "Where's your Weasley friend?"

"What do you want Ron for?" Harry asked.

Crabbe looked at the ceiling, apparently feigning innocence. "Oh, no reason."

"But Vince," Goyle said, "I thought we were going to beat him up..."

"You're not supposed to say that out loud!" Crabbe said harshly.

Goyle sulked. "I like it better when Draco makes the plans." Crabbe punched him.

Harry caught Hermione's eye, and she nodded. This was really happening. "Um...'Vince'..." she prompted, interrupting a furious shoving match. "Why do you want to beat up Ron?"

"Oh, no reason."

"But I thought-"

"Greg, shut up!"

Harry sighed. "Look, we're not going to let you beat up Ron unless you have a good reason to do it. If you can explain yourselves, maybe we'll tell you."

They blinked at him, apparently taking a moment to work out what he was saying. Then, before Crabbe could stop him, Goyle grunted, "Draco's going mad."

"You weren't supposed to say that!"

"Ow! Quit hitting me! Draco never hits me!"

"Gentlemen," Hermione said sharply, although Harry felt she was stretching the definition too much. "What do you mean, Malfoy's going mad?"

Crabbe said, "He doesn't come back to the dormitory when it's lights out. He keeps telling us not to follow him and when we try he shouts at us."

"And he keeps writing funny notes and he won't let us look and he threatened to knot my arms behind my head," Goyle said, sounding on the verge of tears. "And he told us not to help him when he gets in fights with Weasley, and we asked him which Weasley, and he called us something with lots of syllables and asked which Weasley did we think."

"And he talks in his sleep all about Weasley," Crabbe added in a hush, "and all the things he wants to do to him, and they're _gross."_

__Hermione nodded slowly. "Anything else?"

Goyle leaned in closer, allowing both Gryffindors to get a good whiff of him, and whispered, "He takes too many showers. Many too many showers." Harry didn't have the stomach to ask Goyle to define that further.

He and Hermione shared another look, then looked at the openly worried pair of Slytherins. "So let me get this straight: Malfoy seems to be going mad, and you think that beating up Ron will solve it."

"Exactly." Crabbe punched Goyle. "I told you they would understand it."

Hermione buried her face in her hands.

Harry tried to look genuinely contrite as he said, "I'm sorry, but I don't think that's a good enough reason. Violence doesn't solve anything."

Goyle's jaw went slack.

"But," Hermione said, looked up, "if you can give us some more evidence that Ron's driving Malfoy insane, we might change our minds."

"Evidence?" Crabbe said blankly.

"You know," Harry said quickly, cottoning on, "proof. Other things that Malfoy says or does."

Crabbe nodded slowly. "And if we do, will you let us beat him up?"

"Of course," said Harry as he crossed his fingers behind his back.

Crabbe nodded. "Okay. Come on, Greg, we have to go get evidence." He grabbed Goyle by the arm and started pulling him in the direction of the dungeons.

Goyle said blankly, "Vince, Potter said that violence-"

"I know what he said, Greg."

"But he said-"

"I know, Greg."

"I'm confused."

"Come on. We have to find some evidence."

"Okay..."

Harry and Hermione watched them thunder down towards their common room in dull amazement. Finally, he asked, "Hermione, did we just recruit Crabbe and Goyle to spy on Malfoy?"

"I don't want to think about it, Harry. We need to talk to Ron."


	3. This Isn't What It Looks Like

Hermione was not entirely certain what they were going to do with their new knowledge. She didn't know why Draco Malfoy would choose now to develop some sort of neurosis, or how Ron exactly figured into it, but she wasn't going to let the little ferret do anything to harm him. _At least, not until I get a chance with him_, she thought, and then told herself off for doing so.

They entered the library and found Ron's bag easily enough; unfortunately, Ron was not in sight. "He probably just went off to the card catalog," Harry said. "He'll come back eventually."

"I think we should go look for him," Hermione said firmly. "I really think he needs to know about this."

"What's the rush?"

She sighed; Harry could be so _thick_ sometimes. "Have you suddenly forgotten the past four hours? Malfoy's got some kind of fixation on Ron, he needs to be on his guard."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Hermione, look, take it from me: he's not going to appreciate having us swooping around trying to protect him from some kind of nebulous threat from Malfoy, when all we've got to go on are some comments from two people who are not, let's face it, the brightest crayons in the box."

"Harry," she said, trying to appeal to reason, "how would you feel if Malfoy kidnapped Ron and used him as a virgin sacrifice to Cthulhu?"

He made a face. "I'm not entirely sure that Ron's a virgin, Hermione."

"_What?"_

"But think of it this way," he said quickly, "how would _you_ feel if Ron got all offended at us for over-reacting and never spoke to us again?"

"All right," she said sweetly, "how would _you_ feel if I Transfigured Hedwig into a fruitfly and fed her to Trevor?"

"You wouldn't."

"Just try me."

Harry shook his head. "Fine. We'll go look for him. But you keep your wand away from my owl, got it?"

"Oh, Harry, I was only joking." She grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him into the stacks.

It only took a few moments to spot Ron, or more precisely, to spot Ron's hair. Operating on the assumption that the rest of him was attached, Hermione dragged Harry in that direction, until she spotted a flash of silver-blonde from around Ron's shoulder. Then she shoved Harry into the next aisle over, seized with panic. "Malfoy's already here!" she whispered. "We've got to do something!"

Harry seized her by the upper arms. "Hermione, calm down. Breathe deeply. They've already gotten into one vicious brawl today, I don't think either of them will be actively trying for a detention."

"You're right, you're right..." She looked down the aisle, and an idea occurred to her. "Harry, come here and give me a hand."

He looked are her warily. "What do you want to do?"

"I want to hear what they're saying. Come on." She grabbed the sleeve of his robes and pulled him forward.

He resisted. "You're suggesting we spy on them?"

"Well, I'm not going to leave it all up to Crabbe and Goyle. Who knows how many shiny objects there are in the Slytherin dormitories?" She paused when the sound of the two boy's voices became loudest: Ron's, a hoarse snarl, and Malfoy's, an acidic drawl. She tested the stability of the shelf, then looked at Harry. "Give me a leg up, will you?"

He looked up and down the aisle, then sighed. "Hermione, can I just say that I don't think this is a good idea?"

"Yes. Now get over here and help."

He bent over and cupped his hands together; she put her foot in them, then boosted herself up onto the shelf. Harry grunted. "What've you got in your pockets, bricks of lead?"

"Shh!" She strained, but still couldn't make out individual words. She put her other foot on Harry's shoulder and climbed higher.

"Ahhh! Who made me your stepstool?"

"Hush up!" She wobbled a bit as Harry squirmed, but managed to stay balanced. Now her head was just above the top shelf, and she could finally hear them clearly.

"...think you're playing at, Malfoy."

"Oh, need me to use simpler sentences?

"Quit putting words in my mouth!"

"I really should, there's so many other things I'd rather be putting there..."

Hermione tried to climb higher, to see over the edge of the shelf in case something violent happened. She put her original foot on Harry's head, but she slipped and nearly fell. "Yaa! Herm, those are my glasses! _Were_ my glasses..."

"Shhhh!" She pressed her ear to the place where a book had been removed, trying to ignore how badly Harry was wobbling.

"...much more enjoyable, you know."

"Malfoy, that's sick. Really sick.'

"Oh, come on, Weasley, you can't say you've never thought about it..."

"Yes, I can, because I'm not evil."

"'Evil' is such a relative term..."

Her heart jumped into her throat. Was Malfoy trying to recruit Ron for You-Know-Who? She strained to hear more, but Harry's hand slipped and she nearly fell. "Hold _still!"_ she hissed.

"I'm trying, you're the one who keeps moving around up there!"

In the next aisle, she heard Ron laugh. "You're _pathetic, _Malfoy," he said coldly.

It sounded as if Malfoy growled. "Watch it, Weasley," he said. "Just for that, I'm going to make you suffer. Oh, next time we meet, I'm going to make you _scream."_

"I'll enjoy seeing you try," Ron said contemptuously. She heard footsteps heading away, and she tried once more to get up and over to determine whose they were. She strained, heard Harry yell, and felt his hands sliding off her shoe. She tried to shift her weight to the other foot, but everything tilted wildly beneath her, and with a squawk she was pitched to the floor.

The back of her head cracked sharply against the shelf, and for a moment, she saw stars. She realized vaguely that she had landed on something rather softer than the hardwood library floor. She heard Harry moan from the vicinity of her knee, and was about to attempt getting up when she heard Ron's scandalized yelp from the other end of the aisle. "_Hermione! _What the hell? Is that _Harry?"_

She looked down. She could see her feet. She could see Harry's feet. In fact, she could see all of Harry up to about his shoulders, but no more, because his head was up her robes. She shrieked and kicked away, then scrambled to her feet and turned to face Ron. "That wasn't what it looked like! That wasn't anything! I don't know what it looked like to you, but it wasn't that! I was...we were...he was holding my ankles and we fell over! And I landed on him! Because I was standing on his shoulders! To get a book!"

Ron looked just slightly bug-eyed, then shook his head. "Fine. Sure. Whatever. Er, what happened to his glasses?" As if to punctuate this question, Harry moaned.

Five minutes, a lot more moaning, and one quick Mending Charm later, they were headed back to Gryffindor Tower. Harry kept shooting dirty looks at Hermione and wouldn't talk. "So, did you find what you were looking for?" Hermione asked brightly, once she had finished trying to apologize.

Ron blinked, then nodded. "Oh, yeah, I found it."

"What did you need it for, anyway?"

"Forget about it, it's not important."

Except it obviously _was_ important, if it would prompt Ron to venture into the depths of the library. Hermione felt a surge of annoyance at being deliberately excluded from his life, then gave herself a long mental lecture about how they didn't need to do everything together because they were two..._three_ discrete human beings capable of living separate and fulfilling lives, and Ron could have any secrets he wanted to, and she didn't care about his ruddy little book anyway, because it was more important right now to get Harry alone and tell him what she'd heard, and find out if he'd seen anything while his head was up her robes.


	4. Bedpans and Broomsticks

After spending twenty minutes listening to Hermione breathlessly recount the conversation in the library, ten convincing her that it would be better not to go to Professor McGonagall accusing Malfoy of being an agent of evil, and forty-five assuring her that he hadn't seen anything either of them would regret (he had not, after all, been wearing his glasses), Harry was able to do his homework in peace. This was not at all as spectacular as it sounded, because he had both Potions and Divination to do, and he was looking forward to neither, but the alternative was missing Quidditch practice tomorrow to do it. At least Ron helped him start the Divination assignment ("Explain how the motion of Venus will affect Pisces, Leo and Virgo in the coming weeks"), but eventually went to bed early, pleading exhaustion.

That night, Harry had a strange dream. Thankfully it had nothing to do with Voldemort or the war or Dark magic or Cho Chang, since those dreams tended to wake him up screaming and/or dirty the sheets. This time he dreamed he was in Transfiguration, and Professor McGonagall was explaining crisply that he had to carry the official Gryffindor bedpan for the weekend. Dream-Harry tried to argue, but the small white teddy bear affixed to the end of Dream-McGonagall's wand bit him, so he went back to seat and put the bedpan in his bag. He tried to ask Dream-Hermione what to feed the bedpan, but she was too busy glaring at Dream-Ron, who in turn was deeply engrossed in eating a hot dog. Dream-Harry watched Dream-Ron lick off the relish with relish.

He suddenly woke up, and realized that this was because somebody was sitting on his bed. In the faint moonlight, he could just make out a shock of badly mussed red hair. "Where's your hot dog?" he asked groggily. Ron then ruined what could've been a perfectly fine moment of semi-consciousness by screaming.

Dean, Seamus and Neville all woke up at once, and Neville screamed, too; after a moment, Seamus joined him. "What the hell's going on?" Dean moaned.

Harry grabbed his glasses and put them on, just as Dean lit his lamp. Ron was sitting on the floor, fully dressed, hyperventilating and clutching Harry's Firebolt. Neville and Seamus stopped screaming. "Are you being murdered again, Ron?" Dean continued angrily.

Ron shook his head mutely.

"Then why'd you scream?"

Harry watched as Ron looked rapidly from the broom in his hands, to Harry's open trunk, to Harry, to his own stated of clothed-ness, then gave a rather shrill laugh. "I was dreaming," he said with astonishing clarity, "that I was playing for England in the Quidditch World Cup. Then Harry asked me about my hot dog and I screamed."

Seamus grunted. "You were sleepwalking, Weasley, go back to bed."

"Why," Neville asked curiously, "did you scream when Harry asked you about your hot dog?"

"Well, it wasn't really expected, was it?"

"Ah."

"Why'd _you_ scream?" Dean asked, turning to Seamus and Neville.

Neville shrugged. "I was scared."

Seamus shrugged. "Everybody else was. I didn't want to be left out."

Dean shook his head and turned out the lamp.

Ron put Harry's broom away and climbed into his own bed to put his pajamas back on. Harry heard Seamus and Neville go back to sleep, but something was nagging him. "Ron?"

"Yeah, Harry?"

"Why'd you get _my_ broom out?"

There was a slight pause. "I don't know, Harry, I was dreaming."

"Ah."

"Harry?"

"Yeah, Ron?"

"Why did you ask me about my hot dog?"

Harry shrugged in the darkness of his own bed. "I was dreaming about you eating a hot dog when you woke me up."

"Wow. I'm flattered. My eating habits have penetrated your subconscious."

"Well, you weren't just eating the hot dog," Harry said, annoyed, "you were...well..."

"What was I doing to the hot dog?"

"You were eating it _sensuously."_

__There was another pause. Then, very slowly, Ron asked, "How, exactly, do you sensuously eat a hot dog?"

"Oh, go back to bed, Ron."

"Right. Good night."

Harry laid down. The entire dormitory was silent for a moment. Then the door was kicked open, and a blinding flash illuminated everything. Neville and Seamus screamed again. Harry threw open his bedcurtains and saw a crestfallen Colin Creevey, with camera and flashbulb, peering around. Dean stuck his head out of the curtains again. "Colin? What the hell?"

"Sorry," Colin said, sounding disappointed. "I heard screaming and I thought maybe there was another famous murderer in the tower." He looked about again, as if he were about to check under the beds and in wardrobes. "There isn't, is there?"

Harry sighed. "No, Colin, there are no other murderers in the tower. I just asked Ron about his hot dog. You can go back to your own dormitory now."

"Oh...okay. Night, Harry!" Colin waved jauntily and left.

Dean got up and shut the door, then glared around the room. "Anybody else going to do something alarming tonight?"

"No, Dean," they all chorused.

"Good. Or else I shall kill you. Sweet dreams."

"Night, Dean."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The hot dog thing was inspired by a conversation with my friend Michelle. It was originally about "The Lord of the Rings" movie, but somehow ended up relating to the Freudian symbolism of various foods, with special consideration to hot-dog buns.
> 
> I thought you would want to know.


	5. Closets, Eels, Hickeys, Charms

Hermione's brilliant plan came to her in the small hours of the morning, but she quickly recognized that it wouldn't be easy. Harry would not want to help. But she could make him help, couldn't she? Hedwig had to come near her some time, and he wasn't nearly as good at animal-to-animal transfiguration as she was. Granted, she wasn't certain that it would look good for a prefect to take an innocent post owl hostage, but since he'd already forbidden her to go to Professor McGonagall, there wasn't much choice. Thoroughly satisfied with her reasoning, she passed out in her Arithmancy homework.

The next morning, all the fifth-year boys seems rather drowsy. Hermione caught Harry's elbow as he was heading out the portrait hole and dragged him back to her dormitory. "Harry, I've got an idea."

"Good morning to you, too, Hermione. Why are there long columns of two-digit numbers on the side of your face?"

"Are you listening? Because this is a good plan."

"I'm listening." He yawned.

"Good. Now, we know that Malfoy is trying to seduce Ron to the Dark Arts."

"We do?"

"_Yes,_ Harry, _please_ try to keep up with the situation."

"Whatever you say."

"_Exactly._ We know that Malfoy is trying to seduce Ron to the Dark Arts, and, failing that, wants to kill him."

"Wait a minute-"

"In fact, he may succeed in seducing him to the Dark Arts and kill him anyway, because this is Malfoy we're talking about, he doesn't make any sense."

"When did the killing start?"

"Harry, _please _pay attention!"

"I have been, and I'm not sure it's helped!"

Hermione sighed. Her brilliant plan was did not look very brilliant when Harry used that voice on her. "All right. Let's _assume_ that Malfoy is trying to seduce Ron to the Dark Arts and possibly kill him. All right?"

"All right," he said cautiously.

"Now," she continued, eager to get to the good bit, "the first thing we should do is tell Professor McGonagall about it, but since you won't let me, the next thing we should do is stand watch on Ron day and night to protect him from Malfoy's nefarious intentions."

Harry sighed. "Hermione, what did I tell you about looking out for Ron's best interests? Didn't I use the word 'don't'?"

"You are _interrupting me,_" she said harshly. "Now, since you won't let me do that either, I've decided that the best thing we could do is to catch Malfoy in the act of trying to murder Ron, because we'll still be able to rescue Ron, and we can get enough evidence to make sure he gets expelled, or at least gets detentions until the end of the year, and we all know that by then something awful will have happened to you and everything will be different again."

She beamed at him.

"Hermione," Harry said slowly, "are you sure you didn't hit your head when you fell in the library?"

She glared at him. How _dare_ he ridicule her brilliant plan! Especially when _he_ was the one who wouldn't let her go to McGonagall or start casting protective charms on Ron's socks! _"Fine!_" she shrieked. _"Be_ that way! Go ahead and _let _Malfoy kill Ron! Let's give him the password and a map to the common room! As a matter of fact, let's kill him ourselves! _I_ certainly think it'd be a _grand _idea! I'll hold him down, and you can _hit him with a hammer!_"

"Hermione, please-"

"No, really, Harry! I'm serious! Let's kill Ron and wash our hands of the whole thing! Crabbe, and Goyle, and Malfoy, and everything! Wait a just a minute while I _sharpen my straight razors!_"

_"Hermione!_" Harry seized her by the shoulders. "I don't want to kill Ron! I don't want Ron to be killed by anyone else, either! In fact, I'd like to keep death out of this entirely! Okay?"

She took several deep breaths. "Okay."

Somebody said, "Ahem."

Hermione whirled around and found a very, very nervous-looking Lavender Brown lingering the doorway. Lavender swallowed hard several times. "I forgot my Charms book," she said, very quietly.

"We don't have Charms today," Hermione reminded her. "We've got Defense Against the Dark Arts, History of Magic, then after lunch is double Herbology, and Astronomy tonight."

"Oh, right..." Lavender backed slowly out of the room. "Well, I'll just be going, then..." And she fled.

Harry buried his face in his hands. "Great. Just great. By the time we get down to breakfast, the whole school is going to think we're out to murder Ron."

"Oh, don't be stupid, Harry, nobody will believe that." Hermione grabbed her bag and started down the stairs.

"Really?" he said morosely. "Just like nobody believed that I was the heir of Slytherin? Or that you were the love goddess of Gryffindor Tower?"

Hermione considered the thought for a moment, then sighed. "You're right. We'd better catch Ron before class and explain."

"Explain what? That we're not really trying to kill him, but Malfoy might be, so we're got your Brilliant Plan?"

"Well, when you put it _that_ way, of course it sounds stupid!" She found herself thinking that Harry really needed to learn something about teamwork, especially if he wanted to be Quidditch captain next year. She then told herself off for being uncharitable to Harry. "Come on, we'll miss breakfast."

This addendum to the Brilliant Plan was interrupted, however, by Crabbe and Goyle, who intercepted them in the entry hall. "Can we beat up Weasley now?" Goyle asked eagerly.

Crabbe added, "We've got evidence,"

Hermione noticed Ernie Macmillan watching them avidly, and decided that she didn't need two of the biggest gossips in her year spreading rumors about Ron's fate. "Come over here," she said, beckoning Crabbe and Goyle towards a handy broom closet. When they were close enough, she shoved them inside, then dragged Harry in afterwards and shut the door. It was very tight fit, and strong odor of Goyle made her eyes burn. "Now," she said, "what is your evidence?"

Crabbe took a deep breath. "Well, Draco snuck out of the dormitory after lights-out last night and we tried to follow him, we really did, but he jumped out of a window with his broom and we didn't have brooms and we can't fly so of course we couldn't follow him, but when he got back he was talking to himself about Weasley and calling him names and things and, and-" he leaning in very close, "-he had a _hickey_!"

"And he took another shower," Goyle added helpfully. "At three o'clock."

Harry turned around and banged his head against a wall. Crabbe and Goyle looked at him curiously until Hermione grabbed him by the neck of his robes and made him stop. "Er...Vince, Greg...I want you to think very hard," she said slowly. "What exactly did Malfoy call Ron?"

They screwed up their faces in concentration. "He called him a bastard," Crabbe said finally, "and a git and a wanker, and clumsy bastard, and a wanker again...and he said he should tie him up and teach him who was boss--Draco said it, I mean--and that next time would be, next time..."

"Slow torture," Goyle grunted.

"Right. And he said Weasley's wand was too damn big, too." They looked anxiously at Hermione and Harry, apparently waiting for confirmation of their evidence so they could beat up Ron.

Harry opened his mouth, but before he could say anything. Hermione grabbed a handy bucket and put it over his head. "Thank you very much, gentlemen, but I'm afraid that's still not enough evidence. You'll just have to get more."

"More?" Goyle wailed. "How much more?"

"Well, if it's really, really good..."

Crabbe sighed. "Come on, Greg, let's go get more."

"But Vince..."

"Come _on,_ or we'll never get to be beat up Weasley."

"Oh, _fine._ I like it better when Draco orders me around."

"Shut up..."

Once the two Slytherins were out of the broom closet, she removed the bucket from a squirming Harry, who glared at her. "Hermione, this has got to stop. You're getting unreasonable."

She scoffed loudly. "I am perfectly reasonable, Harry, or weren't you listening?"

"Well, not to the last bit, due in part to _big filthy bucket_ on my head..."

"Malfoy was out plotting something last night! Something to do with Ron's wand! And he wants to torture him!"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Hermione, he had a hickey. _A hickey. _He probably snuck out to meet a girl somewhere and they were snogging. I mean, just because _we_ don't have sex lives doesn't mean we have to go messing about with other people's...especially Malfoy's...oh, god, I'm never going to get that image out of my brain..."

She sighed explosively. "_Crabbe_ said it was a hickey, Harry, _Vincent Crabbe._ Do you honestly think he knows a genuine hickey from a sedated wombat? And don't you think it's a bit _odd_ that Malfoy should sneak out of the castle to snog with a girl, then go around and complain about Ron later?"

Reluctantly, Harry nodded. "All right. So maybe it's a little suspicious. But, I mean, you still think Malfoy wants to kill him?"

"Malfoy's obviously gone mad, Harry, who knows what he thinks?" She paused. "And what do you mean, _we_ haven't got sex lives?"

He turned very red. "I didn't mean to imply anything..."

"I'll have you know I have a perfectly fulfilling sex life!"

"I'm sure you do!"

"Don't you use that tone of voice with me!"

"What tone of voice?"

"_That_ one!"

"_What_ one?"

"Harry Potter, you apologize _right now_ for casting aspersions on my sex life or I shall feed you to the eels!"

"_What _eels?"

_"Harry!"_

__He cowered against the door of the closet. "I'm sorry, all right, I'm sorry! I never meant to imply that you _didn't_ have a rewarding sex life! I take it back! Please don't hurt me!"

Hermione relaxed, and smoothed her hair back. She realized she was holding a bottle of Mrs. Skower's All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover in much the same manner as a troll clutches its club; she set it aside. "All right, then. Thank you. That's all I ask." She took a very deep breath, then shouldered her bag again. "We should be getting to breakfast."

"Okay," Harry said, eyes still popping slightly.

"And we're still agreed to the original plan?"

"Er...sure." He turned the door handle. "After all, if I said 'no," you'd kidnap my owl, right?"

Hermione opened her mouth to respond, but didn't get a chance to. When Harry pushed open the closet door, they came face-to face with a small crowd of slack-jawed spectators, including Ernie Macmillan, Colin Creevey, Natalie MacDonald, Sarah Fawcett, and Professor Sinistra. Almost in unison, they all turned (some had to stand up) and walked away, talking in very loud voices about the weather.

Harry looked at her uneasily. "How much do you reckon they heard?"

"Oh, nothing important, I'm sure."

"Just you screaming about eels, right?"

"Shut up, Harry, we're late for breakfast."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry's line, "I have been, and I'm not sure it's helped," was originally uttered by Arthur Dent in Life, the Universe and Everything_ by Douglas Adams. It's an excellent book and you should all read it as soon as you're done with this. _


	6. Sometimes a Wand is Just a Wand

Harry took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, desperate to stay awake. From his podium, Professor Binns lectured at length about political developments in the International Federation of Wizards in the nineteenth century, the Turkish language, and what this all had to do with the Crimean War. Absolutely no one looked enthused. Even Hermione had stopped taking notes, and was looking through a very thick book she'd gotten from the library titled _The Making and Breaking of Wands_ by Oliver Ollivander. She'd already interrogated their DADA professor about how wands could be turned against their owners, and kept sneaking concerned glances Ron's, which was sticking out of his pocket.

Suddenly Ron prodded him in the elbow with the end of his quill. Harry looked over, and noticed a large piece of parchment by his right hand. He took it and read:

_Are you plotting to kill me?_

Dipping his quill quickly into his inkwell, Harry scribbled back.

_No! Why?_

Ron sucked on the end of his quill for a moment. Then he began to scribble furiously. When he slid the paper back towards Harry, he had written:

_1\. Hermione keeps dragging you off and hiding.   
2\. You followed me to the library yesterday.   
3\. She's staring at me.   
4\. I heard Lavender tell Parvati you were, and that you'd hired Malfoy to do it.   
5\. Ernie Macmillan told me in the hall that you two were clandastin lovers and were buying eels from Crabbe and Goyle for some kind of weird sexy thing.   
6\. Colin Creevey told me in the hall that you are stalking me.   
????_

Harry massaged his temples for a moment. Then, choosing his words carefully, he wrote back.

_1-3. Hermione is not herself right now. I can't tell you why or she'll kidnap Hedwig.   
4\. Lavender overheard a conversation out of context. Do you really think we'd need a hitwizard if we wanted to kill you? Which we don't.  
5\. This is Ernie. She's not my girlfriend.   
6\. Colin spends much of his free time in a poorly ventilated darkroom.   
I don't care what you've heard, I swear to God we are not trying to kill you._

Ron looked doubtfully at the parchment, then wrote:

_That's what she told me this morning, before I'd heard anything._

Harry read this, then drew a large question mark underneath it. Ron took the parchment back and wrote further.

_When she pulled me aside while you were getting toast, she told me that we would always be friends and just friends and then she said "and don't think anything more about it" but she might've been talking to herself. Then she said, would I believe anything I heard, and I said no. So she said that no matter what she swore you weren't trying to kill me. Then she left. _

Harry groaned softly. Binns kept up at full speed, but Dean looked up (he had been drawing on a sleeping Seamus) and frowned. Harry waved him off. Then, underneath Ron's paragraph, he wrote:

_ WE ARE NOT TRYING TO KILL YOU. EVEN A LITTLE BIT.  _

_You're overrecting. _

Ron scowled.

_What about the closet?_

_Nothing happened in the closet. _

_That's not what Ernie says. _

_That's Ernie._

Ron shook his head, then wrote at the very bottom,

_I believe you. Explain, though?_

_I can't right now. Hedwig's in danger. Maybe later when Hermione's herself._

Ron chewed his quill some more, then wrote two letters next to Harry's reply. _OK._

__Harry crumpled up the parchement and stuffed it in his bag. A few moments later, the bell rang, and everyone tried to bolt for the door before Binns could assign their homework ("Eighteen inch essay on the Congress of Berlin and its affect on the legal status of centaurs"). Once in the hall, most everyone headed straight for the Great Hall and lunch, except for Seamus (who had a picture of a grindylow making a rude gesture on his forehead and wanted to know why people were laughing) and Hermione (and, therefore, Harry). Hermione dragged him into a convenient nook hidden behind a tapestry, then shoved the wand book in his face.

"Look at this!" she said shrilly. "Just look!"

Harry took a deep breath to marshal his resources. "Hermione," he said, "It is very dark, and the page is pressed right against my glasses. I couldn't look it I wanted to."

"Oh. Sorry." At least she looked embarrassed when she finally lit her wand; they balanced the book across both their arms, and she pointed at the appropriate passage. "Read this. Go on."

Harry read:

_The Sceptron Curse is one of the spells most strongly condemned by the Ministry of Magic and the international community at large, after the Unforgivable Curses. It strikes at the heart of a wizard's power, his wand, rendering it unresponsive and unpredictable at best; at worst, it allows the caster to take control of the affected wand, and even turn it against its rightful wielder. In Britain, being caught casting such a curse is punishable by not less than five and nor more than ten years in Azkaban, and a three-hundred-Galleon fine, in addition to any punishment accrued for crimes possibly committed via a cursed wand. _

_The Sceptron Curse is extremely difficult to work, and requires one to intimately handle the wand one wishes to curse. It works best if one's own wand is of a similar size and construction._

__"What's this got to do with anything?" Harry asked.

"Crabbe said that Malfoy was complaining about the size of Ron's wand!" Hermione said triumphantly. "He must be trying to work this curse, but their wands are too different!"

"Are you sure? I mean, have you ever seen Malfoy's wand?"

"Well...no," she admitted. "But you have, right? I mean, it's been right up in your face enough times..."

"I'm usually a bit too preoccupied to notice the fine details, Herm."

She sighed. "Well, we know it has to be smaller than Ron's, because otherwise he wouldn't be complaining about the size. How big is Ron's, anyway?"

"You mean you don't remember?"

"I don't go around keeping track of everyone's wand sizes, Harry!"

"Well, neither do I! He showed it to us both at the beginning of third year, remember?"

"Yes, well, that was third year! And besides, you're his roommate, you must've seen it loads of times!"

"I don't know what you think goes on in our dormitory, but I don't go around examining everyone else's wands. That's weird."

"Well, how are we going to compare Ron's wand to Malfoy's if we don't know how long they are?"

"Well, we could ask..."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "What, just walk up and say, 'Excuse me, Malfoy, could we have a look at your wand?' You think he'd just whip it out for us?"

"Well, it's not like he hasn't before..." There was an odd noise that sounded vaguely like word _snark._ "Did you hear that?"

"Oh, it's probably just Peeves..." She frowned. "Okay, Harry, how long is your wand?"

"Eleven inches. Why?"

"I've seen you two together, so I know Ron's is longer than that...and it's longer than my wand, too, and mine's twelve and three-quarters."

The was another, much louder _snark_, and a thump. Harry stuck it head out of the nook and saw a very pale Colin Creevy passed out in the corridor. He groaned. "Hermione, we've been overheard again."

"Oh, pooh." She peered out. "We should probably be getting down to lunch anyway, though, so it's no big deal."

"What do we do with Colin, though?"

Hermione peered closely at him, took out her wand (which, to Harry, looked much closer to twelve and a half) and prodded him. "_Ennervate._" Colin's eyes snapped open, he looked at Hermione, and began to scramble crabwise across the floor, now making noises that sounded like _nguh nguh nguh._ Once he was about twelve feet away, he staggered to his feet and ran off, still blubbering.

Hermione stood up and frowned. "Colin's gone mad."

"Perhaps he's caught whatever Malfoy has." Harry got his bag out from behind the tapestry, and they headed down to the Great Hall together, arguing in hushed voices about the size and composition of Malfoy's wand.

Harry noticed that they got a lot of funny looks when they arrived, and he wondered what kinds of rumors were floating about now. Ron was seated at the end of the table, completely ignoring his food and seemingly engrossed in a piece of parchment. He had a funny look on his face, almost anticipatory. "Hullo, Ron," Harry said, sitting down.

Ron stuffed the parchment out of sight. "Oh, hello, Harry. Hello, Hermione. Where have you two been?"

"Oh, just around," Hermione said breezily, pouring herself some pumpkin juice.

Ron gave Harry a significant look before asking, "You missed something really good, you know. Colin Creevey came running through here a minute ago screaming about orgies and hermaphrodites. Madame Pomfrey made him go lie down."

Hermione and Harry shared a look. Slow realization began to dawn on him, of just what Colin had overheard, or might have thought he overhead. He banged his head on the table.

"Harry?" Ron asked, alarmed. "What's the matter?"

"Never mind him," Hermione said. "He's just being stupid."

"We're still not trying to murder you, Ron," Harry added, just in case that had come up as well.

Ron nodded, looking apprehensively at them both.

And that might have been the end of it, at least until Herbology, if Hermione hadn't begun to fidget. Badly. Harry tried to ignore her, but Ron was starting to notice, and he dreaded what might come out of her mouth if he were to ask what was wrong. He struck up a loud conversation about the Chudley Canons, trying to cover things up. However, neither of them could ignore it when Hermione started mumbling to herself, and when she began to arrange her peas in little geometric patters on her plate, one of them had to ask. "Er, Hermione?" Ron ventured around a mouthful of food. "Anything wrong?"

She looked up at him and blurted, "Ron, has Malfoy ever handled your wand?"

Ron's eyes bugged out, and he probably would have said something incredulous if he hadn't tried to gasp first. He began to choke violently on a half-masticated spring roll, coughing and spraying bit of things Harry didn't particularly want to identify all over the table. Hermione immediately leapt to her feet, went around the table, and wrapped her hands around Ron's middle. "Hold on, Ron, I know what I'm doing!" she shrieked.

"Hermione, I don't think he really needs the Heimlich Maneuver..." Harry said, glancing nervously at all the people watching. Professor McGonagall was bearing down on them with alarm in her eyes.

"Oh, hush up, Harry!" She positioned her hands, despite the flailing protests of Ron, who was turning purple. In a single great heave, she successfully dislodged the food, which sailed across the Hall, through Nearly-Headless Nick, and hit Lisa Turpin in the head with a highly disgusting little _thwap-_like noise. Unfortunately, Hermione's efforts unbalanced her badly, causing her to tip backwards onto the floor; and, because her arms were still locked around his ribcage, Ron came tumbling down on top of her, gasping. She made a funny squeaking noise, and he rolled off immediately, then pulled her to her feet with him.

"Are you both okay?" Harry asked, looked between two red faces.

"I'm fine," Ron said quickly. "Erm..." He looked down at Hermione, who was clutching his robes and looking into his face with bright eyes and a slight, rather goofy smile. Ron let go of her elbows and started plucking at her fingers. "Hermione? Could you let go now?"

"Okay," she said breathlessly, not moving. Harry saw McGonagall approaching, and since discretion is the better part of valor, he grabbed a fistful of bushy brown hair and tugged sharply. Hermione jumped, leapt away from Ron as though he were electrified, then glared at Harry and opened her mouth, as if to commence telling him off.

Luckily McGonagall reached them just then. "Mr. Weasley, Miss Granger, are you all right?"

"They're fine," Harry told her quickly. "They're just, er, startled."

"Yeah," Ron said quickly, "startled."

McGonagall frowned at them. "What exactly did you do, Miss Granger?"

"The-the Heimlich manuver, Professor. It's Muggle first aid."

"I see. I suppose you've forgotten all those Anti-Choking Charms that Professor Flitwick covered earlier this year?"

Hermione turned even brighter scarlet. "I didn't think about that," she said glumly.

McGonagall nodded. "Obviously. Nevertheless, you did react quickly and commendably...five points to Gryffindor."

Hermione grinned at McGonagall. "Thank you, Professor."

"And in the future, let's try not to be so dramatic, shall we?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Sceptron Curse is a product of my own diseased imaginings. The name "Oliver Ollivander" is one that I've heard before in fanfic, but can't specifically place; if it belongs to you, drop me a line.
> 
> No offense intended to any intersexed persons who are reading this, by the way. I hope it's obvious that Ernie is not supposed to represent right-thinking people.


	7. Hermione Doesn't Like Ron Like That, Not Even a Little Bit

Hermione poked her finger into the soil and dropped in another buzzing seed. They were planting Loquacious Daisies today, and Professor Sprout had had to shout instructions over the roar caused by hundred of seeds mumbling to themselves. She supposed they'd have to resort to sign language next term, when the seeds actually bloomed.

She looked over at Harry and Ron, who were working at the same tray on the next bench. Ron seemed extremely perturbed by the whole incident at lunch, and kept shooting worried glances at her. He had also failed to answer her question, which annoyed her. Harry, for his part, seemed to be trying to forget the whole incident, because whenever he looked at anything that reminded him of it (such as Hermione) he tried to pound his head against the nearest solid object. Ron, Dean and Seamus had formed a sort of security ring around him to prevent him from seriously hurting himself.

She was, of course, thoroughly embarassed by the whole thing. She was a rational creature, a self-controlled creature, a creature with absolutely no romantic entanglements whatsoever. Except for Ron. Who wasn't really a romantic sort of entanglement, more like a friendship sort of entanglement, but a very deep sort of friendship. Certainly not one of those weird "friendships with benefits" that Lavender and Seamus had, with all the snogging. Not that she would be averse to snogging. But not from Ron, because Ron was her friend, and one doesn't go around snogging one's friends, unless, apparently, one is Lavender Brown. But Lavender had absolutely nothing to do with this issue, because Hermione was not Lavender, and wasn't going to go around snogging her friends, even if said friend had just picked her up off the floor in such a gentlemanly way (_after he'd sat on me!_ she reminded herself firmly) and even if standing so close to him, with his hands on her arms just so, had been like having an electric current running through her body and had made her heart do absolutely unnatural things and had caused her to forget when she had last breathed...rather like now, in fact...

But she wasn't attracted to Ron! Because Ron was her friend! And he was rude, and lazy, and a horrible student, and sarcastic, and short-temptered, and protective, and much too good a chess player, and cute, and loyal, and impulsive, and funny, and wasn't she supposed to be listing his faults? But it wasn't like she needed to. Because she didn't like him like that. They were friends. And if Malfoy laid one pointy finger on his hide she'd drag him through a hedge backwards. Because Ron was her friend. She'd do the same thing for Harry. In fact, if she was going to be romantically attached to anybody...which she wasn't, but hypothetically...Harry was a much better choice for many very logical reasons, which she just couldn't think of right now. So she should really be thinking about snogging Harry. Not Ron. Even if Harry was short and whiney and frustrating and obstinate and never wanted to listen to her brilliant plans and was always being stalked by Death Eaters and evil overlords and monsters and murderer  
s and possessed bits of stationery. Besides, Crookshanks liked him better.

Which meant that if she liked anyone that way, it would be Harry, and therefore, not Ron. Right? Of course. Because Ron was just a friend. Just a very good friend. But not with benefits. Because she didn't think of him that way, because she didn't think of anyone that way, except maybe Harry, and was only if she had to. But right now she wasn't going to think of anyone that way because it was more important to carry on with the Brilliant Plan and stop Malfoy killing Ron, but not because she liked him that way. Of course not. Right?

"Erm...."

Hermione glanced up. Neville, who was working at the same tray, was looking at her and started to edge away. "Yes, Neville?" she asked.

"Did you, er, ask me a question just now?"

"Of course not."

"Okay. Only you were, er, talking aloud. About Ron and, ah, things."

"Oh, I was?" She felt her face turn scarlet. _But you have no reason to blush, Hermione Granger, because you don't like him like that, remember?_

__"Yeah. And you just did it again."

She finished planting her half of the tray and smiled broadly at Neville. He smiled back nervously. "I'll just go wash up, shall I?" she asked.

"Okay," he said quietly.

She went to the large basin in the back of the greenhouse and pushed up her sleeves, preparing to scrub the dirt out from under her fingernails. However, Ernie Macmillan's voice reached her ears from the other side of a stand of Venomous Tentacula. Curious, she listened more closely.

"...pretty sure Granger is a hermaphrodite."

_What?_ she thought incredulously.

"What?" Justin Finch-Fletchy asked incredulously.

"Where'd you hear this?" Hannah Abbot demanded.

Ernie sounded like he was wearing the world's biggest smirk. "Owen Cauldwell."

"Uh-huh," Susan Bones said, sounding distinctly unamused. "And since when was Owen Cauldwell an expert on the anatomy of fifth-year Gryffindors?"

_Exactly!_ Hermione thought, smirking to herself.

"Well, Owen didn't find it out," Ernie said, as if Susan were very stupid. "He heard it from Dennis Creevey, who heard it from his brother, and his brother heard her talking about it. Apparently she was telling Potter all about how freakishly huge it is."

"So you're saying," Justin said weakly, "that under those robes, Granger's got a...a wand of her own?"

_Of course I have, you hyphenated twit, _Hermione thought, but she felt she was missing something.

"Yeah," Ernie said, sounding disgusted. "I mean, I'd always kind of figured her for a she-male, seeing how she's so smart and everything..."

Susan harumphed. "Of course, Ernie, it's perfectly logical. Nobody can be truly intelligent unless they've got a prick, so naturally the smartest witch in our year must be a hermaphrodite."

Hermione flushed with righteous indignation as Hannah Abbot gigggled. At least Macmillan sounded contrite when he mumbled, "That's not exactly what I meant..."

Justin still sounded unsteady. "But why would Granger be telling Harry Potter about it? I mean why could he possibly need to know..."

Hermione peeked through the leaves of the Tentacula. Ernie had recovered swiftly and was once again enjoying himself, holding court. Hannah was watching eagerly; Justin looked like somebody'd just told him that there was no Father Christmas. Susan was the only one actually planting anything, and looked distinctly bored. "Here's what I reckon," Ernie said in a hushed voice. "See, I heard from Owen that Granger, Potter and Ron Weasley have some kind of sick threesome thing going onthis is what he got from the Creeveys, mind youbut that Potter's starting to fancy Weasley more, and Granger's jealous. And Owen also said that Potter's been shagging Draco Malfoy on the side"

_"What?!"_ Justin yelped.

_What?!_ Hermione thought.

"Yeah." Ernie pulled a face. "It's gross, innit? Anyway, I saw Potter and Granger go into a closet with Malfoy's two goons this morning, and then I overheard them fighting. And Lavender Brown said she overhead then talking about killing Weasley, and getting Malfoy's help. So I reckon, Granger and Malfoy are both jealous that Potter's all sweet on Weasley, so they're sort of teamed up to do it, and Potter's trying to stop them both. And Weasley's just clueless."

Hermione just goggled him through the Tentacula leaves.

"But," Justin said, looking on the verge of illness, "but what about what happened at lunch? She saved him, didn't she? She could've just let him choke and it would've looked like an accident..."

"But then Potter would be all sad," Ernie reminded him. "I reckon that Granger really has some secret plan to doublecross Malfoy, and get him and Weasley to off each otheryou know how they fightso she can have Potter all to herself. I mean, don't you remember what Rita Skeeter wrote about her last year? She should be in Slytherin, I swear..."

Hannah was drinking it all in with a look of unhealthy fascination on her face; Justin looked like his entire world had caved in. Susan just clucked her tongue and shook her head. "You never cease to amaze me, Ernie, you know? Just when I think you've reached the limit, you surpass yourself."

"Thanks," Ernie said with a grin.

_That wasn't a compliment, numbskull!_ Hermione thought, leaning in closer. However, the Venomous Tentacula decided it couldn't resist any living morsel kind enough to climb right into its prop roots, and she felt its feelers snaking around her legs. Stomping hard on them, she completely missed the ones trying to twine around her wrists until she felt the thorns pierce her skin. With a howl of aggravation, she threw herself backwards and pulled out her wand. _"Gelaris!_" she snapped, and a cloud of glittering blue mist enveloped the thrashing plant, freezing it solid. It slowly toppled over, revealing the shocked and frightened faces of three gossipy Hufflepuffs, and Susan Bones, who looked like she'd been expecting this sort of thing all along.

Hermione stood there, wand still out, feeling light-headed and woozy. She realized that everyone in the greenhouse was staring at her. Climbing awkwardly over the fallen Tentacula, she slapped Ernie hard across the face. "I am not a hermaphrodite!" she declared loudly. "Just so you know!" Then the Tentacula venom finally reached her brain, and she passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, no offense intended to the intersexed in general.
> 
> If Susan Bones' characterization seems a bit odd, it's because I've read too many Discworld books, and keep confusing her with Susan Sto Helit. Ah, well, at least her hair didn't start braiding itself...


	8. It

Harry glared at Madame Pomfrey as she prodded his head again with her wand. She was getting entirely too worked up over things. "I really am fine," he said again. "It doesn't hurt."

"And it's the size of a goose egg," she said through pursed lips. "What did you get hit with this time, a Bludger?"

"A table."

Her eyes bugged out.

"Well, I was hitting it," Harry amended. "But that's sort of the same thing, right?" Madame Pomfrey slowly shook her head and prodded his head again. That time, it hurt. "Yeow!"

"If you would hold still and let me shrink it..." She prodded it again. That time, it really hurt. "There. All done."

Harry hopped off the bed immediately and ran across the ward to where Hermione lay, recovering from the sting of the Venomous Tentacula. Ron was sitting up next to her, looking rather more confused than normal. "Is she awake yet?" Harry asked him.

"Yes," Hermione said sharply, "yes, I am, thank you ever so much for noticing, Harry."

"Sorry," he said, taking a seat next to Ron.

Hermione sighed. "I can't believe I let myself do something so stupid as climb right into a teething Venomous Tentacula," she moaned.

"Why," Ron asked, "were you anywhere near the Venomous Tentacula?"

"Oh, I overheard Ernie Macmillan running his mouth off, and I...well, he was saying nonsense, of course, but..."

"But he called you a hermaphrodite?" Ron prompted.

"Yes." She glared at the opposite wall. "I can't believe he actually thinks that."

"But what the hell would give him that idea?"

Harry groaned. "I think I know. I think...er, I think somebody overheard something out of context and was, er, passing it around."

She turned her glare on him. "And what could anyone have possibly heard to cause them to assume I'm a hermaphrodite?"

"Remember what we were talking about right before lunch?"

"We were talking about wands." Ron coughed loudly. "Oh, don't you start, too!"

Ron blinked rapidly. "You were talking about wands? That you cast spells with?"

"Of course, what other sort of wand is there that I would I be talking about?" She glanced between the two incredulous boys. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

Ron suddenly looked up at the ceiling and began to loudly hum "Rule Britannia." Harry shoved him hard and hissed, "I'm not going to explain it to her!" Ron just hummed louder.

"What," Hermione said icily, "aren't you going to explain to me?"

Harry took a deep breath, clamped his hands over Ron's mouth (so he wouldn't have to say this twice) and told her.

Hermione turned very pink. "Oh my."

"Yes." Harry sat back. He felt that he was turning very pink, just from having said it. Ron was still humming. "I reckon that's what Colin was on about to begin with. And Ernie must've reasoned..."

"Ernie doesn't have a brain to reason with. Ron, will you stop humming?!"

He jumped and looked at the floor. "Sorry."

Hermione sighed. "This is embarrassing. And I suppose Macmillan's going to spread it all over the school now, that the three of us are all hormone-crazed perverts, and Harry's somehow involved with Draco Malfoy..."

_"What?!"_ both boys yelped in unison.

She nodded grimly. "And he thinks we're all in league with each other to kill Ron."

Ron looked livid. "And he says Harry's with Malfoy, does he?"

"Yes, I just said that..."

"Excuse me," Harry said, feeling once again that the situation was spiraling out of his control, "but what exactly is the problem?"

Both of the others stared at him blankly.

"I mean," he pressed onward, "okay, people are spreading rumors. That's nothing unusual, not for us, right? As long as we don't do anything to encourage them," he said, with a significant look at Hermione, "they'll all blow over eventually. Right?"

"I guess..." Ron said doubtfully.

"Exactly. So let's just ignore them. Ernie and Lavender will get bored with it sooner or later, and we can always punch Colin in the head and explain to him on our own time. This time next month half the school won't even remember it."

He tried to sound confident and persuasive, but he wasn't certain that it had worked; Ron just looked uncertain, and Hermione seemed ready for a full-scale snit on the level of the Crookshanks Incident. Luckily Madame Pomfrey bustled in and took her temperature just then, or she might've gotten a chance to say something.

"Well, it looks like the anti-venom is working...I suppose you can go. Just don't overwork yourself, and get plenty of sleep."

"Can't," Ron muttered, "we've got Astronomy with Ravenclaw at eleven." Madame Pomfrey gave him a withering look, as if she were itching to take his temperature, too, but with something a lot less safe than a thermometer, and from the other end. Ron blanched. "Well, I'll just go down to dinner, then, shall I?"

"I think I will, too," Harry said loudly when it seemed that Hermione was trying to catch his eye. He didn't want to hear any more lectures about Ron's safety or the Brilliant Plan. She scowled darkly as they left.

He and Ron took their time walking from the hospital wing, since dinner was still some time off. Harry cast about for some interesting topic of conversation that didn't involve Hermione's madness, or Ernie's ignorance, or wands. He had nearly worked out something interesting to say about Oliver Wood and the Puddlemere United team when Ron hesitated at the bottom of a staircase. "Harry?"

"Yes?"

"You know how Ernie's apparently saying that you're sleeping with Malfoy?"

"What about it?"

"You aren't, are you?"

Harry could only gape at him. Ron's face was bright scarlet, and he was staring straight ahead. The harder Harry tried to frame a reply, the more difficult it became to work his jaw. They stood there for several minutes before Ron looked at him and frowned, eyes widening, "Are you?"

"No!" was what Harry tried to say, although by the time it had gotten from his brain to his mouth it sounded more like "Nyaoouh!" He shook his head and tried again. "No! Absolutely not! I mean...I mean...Ron, it's _Malfoy._ Even if I were gay, I wouldn't go near him."

"Okay then," Ron said, but he didn't seem okay.

Harry goggled. "Ron, I swear! Look, do you need me to prove it?"

"I don't need you to prove anything," he said, but his heart wasn't in it.

"I can't believe I'm having this conversation! Ron, I hate Malfoy and I'm straight, what more do you need to know?"

"You were just...just sort of slow to deny it, that's all."

"I was slow because you asked out of the clear blue sky!"

"Well, excuse me for being interested in your life!"

"I'm not angry that you asked!"

"Then why are you shouting at me?"

_"I'm not shouting!"_ Harry took a deep breath, then continued in a less strident voice. "Ron, please, let's not do this again. I promise you that I wouldn't do anything with Malfoy if he were the last life-form on Earth. I've never even considered it."

He looked doubtful. "You sure?"

Harry clenched his fists and looked around. There, walking down the hall with two of her friends, was Eloise Midgen. He steeled himself for what he was about to do, then poked Ron sharply in the arm. "Watch this. I'll prove it to you."

He walked straight up to the three Hufflepuffs, ignoring Ron's uneasy questions. "Excuse me, Eloise?" he said, as politely as he could.

She turned and looked at him, pushing her glasses up her nose. "Erm...yes?"

"Could I, er, have a moment of your time?"

She looked around. "All right..."

Before she could move, or he could lose his nerve, Harry leaned in and gave her what he considered a relatively chaste peck on the side of the mouth. Their glasses clicked together awkwardly. Eloise shrieked and leapt backwards, and he saw something black moving down towards his head very quickly for a split second before everything exploded in stars.

The next thing he knew, he was staring at the ceiling. There was a mildew stain up there shaped like a deformed rabbit. There were people shouting very close by, something about harrassment and madness and bribery. "See, Ron?" Harry said, trying to sit up, "I told you I wasn't gay."

There was more shrieking, and he saw something large, black and foot-shaped hover precariously close to his face for a moment. It occurred to him that he wasn't wearing his glasses. He rolled over and began to grope for them while more people shouted. Suddenly he was hauled up by the back of his robes and carried forward by something large, irritable, and mostly red. "What's this?" he muttered.

"Shut up, Harry," Ron growled. "We're going back to the hospital wing."

"What about my glasses?"

"I've got your bloody glasses." He pushed Harry up a tightly winding staircase, which he found difficult enough to navigate when his head wasn't pounding so hard. "God, Midgen's a terror. She wanted to go to Professor Dumbledore and get you expelled for attempted rape, you know that?"

"I told you I wasn't gay," he said.

"Whatever," Ron sighed.

Harry rubbed his head. "What'd she hit me with, anyway?"

"Her bookbag."

"That was a bookbag?"

"Swung overhand. If you ask me, you should be complaining about her." Ron shook his head. "By the way, you owe me thirty Galleons."

"What for?"

"'Cause I owe it to Eloise."


	9. Best-Laid Plans

It was very quiet at dinner, or perhaps it was just Harry. Ron was being huffy and giving him the silent treatment over the Eloise Midgen incident, and Hermione was being huffy and giving him the silent treatment because he refused to listen to any more permutations of the Brilliant Plan. Ron and Hermione were being huffy with one another because she refused to divulge anything to him about the wand conversation, or why they had been discussing his murder in the girl's dormitories this morning. Everyone else kept giving them odd looks down the table, except for the Weasley twins, who congratulated them all loudly on giving Professor McGonagall another ulcer. Colin Creevey was wearing a large spotty onion around his neck and glanced at Hermione from time to time in furious paranoia. At the Hufflepuff table, Justin Finch-Fletchy looked very gray in the face, and occasionally had to put his head between his knees. Each time he did, Susan Bones would pat him on the back and glare at Ernie Macmillan, who never looked up from his plate. Across the room, Malfoy was sitting between Crabbe and Goyle, glowering and shifting around in his chair quite a bit.

Thus, Harry, who wasn't feeling particularly huffy, was left to attempt civil conversation all on his own. "So," he said brightly, "I hear it's supposed to clear up soon."

Ron grunted.

Hermione sniffed.

"What do you think of Ravenclaw's new Beaters?"

Ron took a drink.

Hermione harumphed.

"I'm going to hitch-hike naked to Sweden."

"Mmm," said Ron.

Hermione chewed on a carrot.

Harry sighed.

It would have all been a lot easier, he thought, if they'd just been honest from the beginning. They could have just walked up to Ron, taken him aside, and said "Ron, Crabbe and Goyle think that Malfoy has gone mad and they want to beat you up, and Malfoy possibly wants to kill you." Yes, it would've sounded ludicrous, but at least it would all be out in the open. Now he sincerely doubted that Ron would believe a word that came out of either of their mouths. "We're not trying to kill you, you know," he told Ron again, just to make sure he hadn't forgotten.

Ron glowered.

They finished their dinners in stony silence, except for a brief fracas featuring Trevor the toad, some Fillibuster fireworks, and the highly startling image of Neville Longbottom putting Lee Jordan in a headlock. Once everyone had been disentangled and all amphibians deemed uninjured, Ron drank the last of his pumpkin juice and stalked out of the Great Hall. Hermione also got up to leave, and Harry decided to try burying the hatchet on a one-on-one basis. "Hermione, please talk to me."

She sniffed.

"Herm, _please,_ I'm sorry about the Eloise Midgen thing."

She looked over to the side and turned up her nose. "Goodness, I wonder what that funny buzzing noise is."

"Come on, Hermione!"

"I can't hear a word..."

"Hermione, look, I really am interested in the Brilliant Plan, okay?"

She shut her eyes and jammed her fingers in her ears. "I can't hear anything! The self-stirring cauldron was invented by Sophia St. Stanislaus! The molecular weight of sodium is twenty-three grams per mole!"

"Will you just _listen?_"

"Kassel is located in Hessen!"

_"Hermione!" _

__"The Diricawl is also known as the dodo!"

Harry took a deep breath. "Hermione, if you don't start talking to me, I'll tell Crabbe and Goyle that they may beat up Ron."

She whirled and looked at him, scandalized, with her fingers still her ears. "You wouldn't."

"I would."

"Would not."

"Would too."

"Not."

"Too."

"Do it and I'll kidnap your owl."

"I'll tell Professor McGonagall on you."

"I won't check your Charms homework."

"I'll turn Crookshanks over to the Weasley twins."

"I'll mutilate your broomstick."

"I'll tell Ernie Macmillan that he's absolutely correct."

She froze in mid-stride, eyes bugging out.

"I'm not kidding, Hermione, I'll tell him_oof!"_ Hermione poked him savagely in the ribs, then pointed across the entrance hall, which they had just entered. Ron was standing at the foot of the marble staircase leading up to their dormitory, talking with Draco Malfoy. Crabbe and Goyle were hanging back, looking confused and uncomfortable, but the moment they saw Harry and Hermione, they launched into a furious and complex pantomime that seemed to involve eating spaghetti, tickling a snake, and wantonly calling into existance a bowl of doomed pentunias.

Before Harry could stop her, Hermione charged forward, resembling nothing so much as a saber-toothed tiger. He scrambled to catch up with her, before anything dangerous occurred. As they drew nearer, Ron's and Malfoy's voices became distinct.

"...isn't _my_ fault, you...you twat!"

"You're getting you anatomy scrambled."

"Oh, go to hell."

"Why? I've got you here..."

"Watch it, Malfoy!"

Suddenly Malfoy spotted them around Ron's shoulder, and his face (which had been uncharacteristically tense) broke into a lazy sneer. "And now, the cavalry arrives. Come to save your pet weasel from the big bad Slytherins?"

Hermione grabbed Malfoy by the front of the robes; the other boys stiffened and froze. "Listen to me, Malfoy," she said sweetly. "If you so much as lay a finger on Rany of my friends, because that's why I'm doing this, he's a friend, if you so much as _breath_ at him wrong, I will cast the Castrarus Curse on you, _and_ your friends, _and _the rest of your House, and then I will kick you so hard you will have to open your mouth to have a pee." She smiled and let go.

Malfoy, looking significantly alarmed, stepped away quickly. "That's pleasant to know, Granger, thank you for that information," he said shakily. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have better things to do that linger in your stultifying company." He turned to leave, and bumped hard into Ron as he did so; Harry couldn't tell whether it was deliberate. Ron reacted instantly, shoving Malfoy hard, so that he landed square on his backside. Malfoy's eyes bugged out of his head when he hit, and he made a small a small, squeaky noise before climbing stiffly up, glaring at Ron, and marching off towards the dungeons with a very curious posture. Ron glared at him and stormed up the stairs, leaving the rest of them to stand around, staring awkwardly. No one seemed to want to stand very close to Hermione.

She scowled after Malfoy, then turned to the two Slytherins. "What were they saying before we came in? And why is Malfoy walking like he's got a screwdriver down back the of his pants?"

Crabbe shrugged. "Draco said that they needed to talk, and that Weasley needs to be more careful, and Weasley said he didn't know what Draco was talking about, and Draco said that he knew damn well what he was talking about, and then he called us stupid, and told Weasley that he was going to eat him alive for what he did to him."

"What's a screwdriver?" Goyle asked.

Hermione kneaded her temples. "See, Harry, I told you that Malfoy was insane. He's got some kind of weird vendetta now, and he's after Ron, I told you...what's that?"

Harry noticed a tightly folded piece of parchment on the stone floor, and picked up. Opening it, he saw unfamiliar, curly handwriting:

_Weasley:   
Meet me in the empty classroom at the bottom of Trelawney's tower after your Astronomy class. You'll get what's coming to you._

Hermione, reading over his shoulder, gasped. "Harry...that's Malfoy's writing!"

"You think they're going to duel?" Harry asked uncertainly.

"Of course not."

"Really?"

"I think Malfoy's going to ambush him and torture him to death." She looked at Crabbe and Goyle, who were watching with mild interest, and addressed them in a manner that reminded Harry strongly of his nursery school teacher. "Listen, you two. Draco's gone mad. We need you to help us stop him...er, stop him getting expelled." Crabbe nodded gravely at this. "Meet us down here, at one o'clock in the morning. Can you do that?"

"Yes," Crabbe said earnestly. "We've got watches."

Goyle showed them his.

"Good," Hermione said. "Now, meet us here at one o'clock in the morning. We will go and stop Draco getting himself expelled. What time?"

"One o'clock."

"Where at?"

"Here."

"Good." By standing up on her tip-toes, Hermione managed to pat them both on the head. They grinned at her. Harry began to bang his head against the wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The phrase "wantonly calling into existance a bowl of doomed petunias" is property of Douglas Adam. It is also a concept that does not leap easily to the eye.


	10. The Naked Truth

Professor Sinistra seemed a bit off during that particular lesson, perhaps because she kept staring furiously at Harry and Hermione. She insisted that they sit on the other side of the room from Ron, and made several excuses to stand near them and look over their shoulders as they took notes. Ron eyed this all curiously from seat between Seamus and Kevin Entwhistle, despite Harry's frequent reminders that they weren't trying to kill him. At least they were all on speaking terms again, after Harry had given him Malfoy's re-folded note and thirty Galleons, and apologized about Eloise Midgen. This, in Hermione's mind, was a Good Thing; later on, she'd be able to explain the Brilliant Plan, and he would be eternally grateful and might even kiss her...

"But I don't want to be kissed," she whispered sternly under her breath. "or at least, not by him, because he's my best friend and I don't like him thatHarry, what is it?"

He pointed at Sinistra, who had stopped lecturing again to stare at her, then to four large words printed on top of his notebook: _YOU'RE DOING IT AGAIN._ She glared and resumed taking notes, trying to ignore the speculative leers she was getting from Stephen Cornfoot. She really hated double Astronomy sometimes.

Harry prodded her on the arm with his quill, then pointed to a fresh page in his notebook. At the top he had written:

_What exactly are we going to do if or when we catch Malfoy? _

She rolled her eyes and wrote underneath,

_We are going to give him a great big hug._

Harry scowled and underlined his original question. Checking to see that Sinistra was on the other side of the room, Hermione took Harry's notebook in her lap and wrote.

_Crabbe and Goyle will be there to provide unbiased witnesses. Once we fetch them, we shall go to the room under Trelawney's tower. Ron and Malfoy ought already to be there. We shall enter by force if necessary and Stun Malfoy, then take photographs of the situation to prove it really happened. (I got Colin's camera out of his dormitory when he wasn't looking.) We shall then fetch Professor McGonagall and Madame Pomfrey, and explain the entire thing in detail. _

She passed the notebook back to Harry, who read it, then pounded his head on the desk. Hermione stopped him before he could attract Sinistra. He glanced at the professor, too (she was helping the Patil twins with a star chart) then wrote underneath her paragraph,

_How do we get there without being seen?_

_I also got your Invisibility Cloak out of your dormitory while you were at Quidditch practice. _

_ ** !? ** _

She rolled her eyes at him again and wrote:

_Do you want Ron to get murdered or not?_

_Fine. Have you stolen anything else I should know about?_

_I'm just borrowing. Don't be rude. _

Harry scowled at her and took his notebook back.

When the class finally ended, Hermione jammed her books into her bag and tore down the steps so quickly she became dizzy. At the base of the tower she met Harry and dragged him off towards a convenient corridor junction. They noticed Ron heading deliberately off in the opposite direction, towards the North Tower. Everyone else was much too drowsy to think of anything except heading back to the dormitories and grabbing as much sleep as possible before breakfast.

"Can I just say that I think this is a very dodgy idea?" Harry asked as she pulled the cloak and camera out of her bag.

"Yes. Now come on." She yanked him towards her and wrapped the cloak snugly around them both, then started off confidently towards the entrance hall. Or at least tried to; much to their chagrin, Harry had had another growth spurt since they tried this last, and it was very awkward trying to walk together without any flailing ankles or exposed fingers. By the time they staggered into the empty, silent entrance hall, it was nearly quarter after, and Crabbe and Goyle were looking very lonely and dejected sitting by the dungeon stairs.

Hermione ducked out from under the cloak and tapped them on the shoulders. "Come on. We have to go stop Malfoy now."

Crabbe frowned. "Where's Potter?"

"He's...invisible," she said, deciding that it wouldn't be wise to complicate things any further with these two.

Goyle nodded. "Can we be invisible, too?"

This was definitely an issue, because Hermione was certain that the cloak would never effectively cover those two, and in any case, she had no desire to spend any more time in close proximity to Goyle than she already in the past thirty-six hours. "Er...no. Only Harry and I can be invisible."

Goyle looked crestfallen. Crabbe, thinking laboriously, said, "But we might get caught out of bed."

This was true; Hermione considered the problem. "That's right, Vince, you're very smart," she said, causing his face to light up. "I think, if anyone catches you, you should tell them that you're lost."

"Lost?" he echoed.

She nodded enthusiastically. "Tell them that you're lost, and ask for directions to the North Tower, because you left your books there. Got all that?"

"We're lost. We left our books in the North Tower," Crabbe said.

"Excellent!" Hermione patted them both on the arms and ducked back under the cloak. Walking a little ahead of their accomplices (Harry, apparently, didn't trust their acting ability), they made their way gradually to the North Tower. On the way, they met no one.

The disused room near the base of the tower had been used by most of the students in the school, at one point or another, in order to snog or duel in secret. It wasn't that difficult to locate. Shrugging off the cloak (which caused Goyle to yelp in alarm) Hermione tried the doorknob. "Locked. Stand back."

"Wait," Harry said, putting his hand on her arm. "Are we sure they're doing anything in there?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if they're just standing there insulting each other, we're going to look pretty foolish." Harry knelt down and pressed his ear to the keyhole.

Crabbe leaned in, looking concerned. "What do you hear?" he asked.

Harry frowned. "I...there's nothing. It's silent."

"Silencing Charm," Hermione said, taking out her wand. "Malfoy must've cast a Silencing Charm. Stand back, Harry_Audius!_" Suddenly, from the other side of the door, they heard a long, low moan. "Did that sound like Ron?" she whispered anxiously.

Harry nodded, brows knit.

There was another moan, and a loud crack that sounded suspiciously like breaking bones to Hermione's ears. "He's killing him in there!" she hissed. "Harry, we're going in now!"

He nodded and drew his wand, standing safely back. Crabbe and Goyle took out their own wands in imitation. Hermione prodded the door handle, whispered _"Alohomora!"_ and head the lock click. The handle turned freely, but she still couldn't get the door open. "It's stuck! Harry, do something!"

He opened his mouth helplessly, but just then there was a tremendous crash and a hoarse yelp from inside. Hermione stepped back as Harry pointed his wand at the door and snapped, _"Reducio!"_ The blast blew the door open with a loud _bang_, and the four them them charged in, wands at the ready.

"Stop!" Hermione shrieked. "Or we'll...we'll..."

Her eyes traveled over the trail of discarded robes leading to a rather inexplicable bed; up the tangle of sweaty sheets which had spilled onto the floor; lingered briefly on the foot of said bed, which had collapsed completely; skipped rapidly over rather more damp, fair skin than she really wanted to see shimmering in the low candlelight; and finally came to rest on two pairs of eyes staring into hers, one blue and horrified, the other gray and challenging.

Behind her, Goyle made a strangled sound in his throat, and a heavy _thunk_ told her that he'd fainted.

Never moving, Malfoy cleared his throat. "Can we help you?" he asked, as if people walked in on him having sex all the time. Ron, red-faced, looked away and tried to slink under what few covers remained on top of the highly improbable bed. He was not very successful.

Hermione managed to find her voice again. "No, not really," she said, wondering why she sounded so high and squeaky.

"Ah," said Malfoy. "Only, you see, we were rather in the middle of something..."

"Oh, okay," Hermione said. "We'll, ah, just be going now, then."

"Bye," Malfoy said cordially.

Hermione backed out, nearly tripping over Goyle. Harry was still standing in place, staring bug-eyed; she snagged the back of his robes and pulled him out. Crabbe pulled Goyle out of the room as well, although he didn't stop opening and closing his mouth slowly, like a fish. Hermione shut the door behind them.

"Draco's not going to get expelled for that, is he?" Crabbe asked anxiously.

Hermione shook her head. "No. No, he's not. I...we...oh, my..."

Harry sat down hard on the floor. "I've gone blind," he said hoarsely. "I've gone blind. I'm not seeing anything else tonight."

Crabbe frowned. "I'm confused."

"We all are, Vince," she said gravely, mind reeling.

On of the other side of the door, somebody said something that sounded a bit like "Wheeee-laahhh!" Harry began to pound his head against the wall.


	11. All's Well That Ends...uh...

Ron eventually found them in the Gryffindor common room, sitting by the fire. Harry was still bug-eyed and breathing shallowly, althought that could have been the result of a concussion; it had taken quite a bit of effort to make him stop pounding his head against solid objects and sit down. Hermione had helped take Goyle down to the Slytherin dormitories, and then escorted Harry back here, and done her best to avoid thinking about the incident upstairs. One could only go on thinking about elvish rights, Oggam runes, or the square root of pi for so long, though, especially when one was continually being interrupted by the nightmarish conjunction of Draco Malfoy and one's best friend. For whom one has strong feelings. But not those sort of feelings, right? Right.

Ron sat down across from them; his robes were inside out, and his hair was sticking up at wild angles. He looked appallingly bright-eyed considering the hour, but the smile on his face was more nervous than happy. "Er...so."

Hermione clear her throat. "So."

They stared at one another.

Ron coughed. "I can explain everything..."

"I'm sure you can," Harry said suddenly, in an odd, hollow voice. "I'm sure it makes perfect sense. I bet it went just like this." He raised his hands and began to perform a sort of crude puppet show. "'Hello, Malfoy.' 'Hello, Weasley.' "Want to shag?' 'Sure!'" He mashed his fingertips together and began to pantomime serious snogging.

"No," Ron said peevishly. "Nothing like that. Not much, anyway."

"How long," Hermione asked, "has this been going on?"

"Oh, just a few...er...weeks."

Harry fell out of his chair.

Hermione buried her face in her hands. "Oh, Ron, why didn't you tell us?"

He blinked. "You didn't ask."

"Oh, yes," Harry said from the floor, "how silly of my. In the future, I shall remember to ask if you've been shagging any Slytherin boys recently."

Ron scowled. "Oh, please, Harry, you make it sound like I'm a...a..."

"Scarlet woman?" Hermione offered. Ron blushed darkly. "But, Ron...I mean...how?"

"Don't you remember the lectures we got third year," Harry asked, "the ones about birth control and crabs, when Snape took all us boys down to the dungeons and put a condom on a flobberworm?"

"That's not what I meant! And Madame Pomfrey put the condom on a banana." She glared at Harry, then looked back to Ron. "What I mean, was...well...how Malfoy? You? Him? How?" She tried to supplement her failing vocabulary with vague little hand gestures, which did no good.

Ron shrugged. "I dunno, it just sort of...happened. You and Harry weren't around, and Crabbe and Goyle were off somewhere...one minute we were fighting, the next minute we were snogging. It was weird, y'know? But not bad weird."

"So, all this time...you've just been...been sublimating the sexual tension...?" Hermione shook her head. "But you still fight like cats and dogs!"

Ron rolled his eyes. "I'm shagging him, Herm, not dating him. He's still an arrogant, insufferable bastard."

"He's just an arrogant, insufferable bastard who has sex with you," Harry said.

"See? Harry understands."

Hermione felt her mouth open and close several times, to no avail. Her brain couldn't put the words together to express her very confused feelings on the subject.

Harry raised his hand as if he were in class. "Excuse me, but how exactly have you two been meeting without our noticing something earlier?"

Ron shrugged. "Well, when Hermione's in the library and you're at Quidditch practice, I'm mostly by myself, right? Or sometimes we sneak out at night...or when we serve detentions together..."

"Detentions?" Hermione said dimly. A sudden, horrifying mental image filled her brain. "All those times you've been with Filch over the last month?"

Ron grinned sheepishly. "Yeah."

"Even the time in the flooded sub-cellar?"

"Oh, yeah." His eyes took on a strange glitter, and his grin went all lopsided. "Cor, was that ever weird..."

Harry buried his face in his hands. "Ron, stop it. Just...I don't want to know. Okay? Can I just pretend he's trying to kill you, and you're not gay, and get on with things?"

"I'm _not _gay."

They stared at him.

An idea suddenly seemed to occur to him. "Hey, is that why you two've been acting like lunatics? You thought Malfoy was out to get me?"

Hermione sighed, and explained as best she could, starting with the unexpected alliance made in the entrance hall. Ron listened with a slowly dropping jaw. "...and we thought he wanted to murder you, or at least duel, and we were going to try to stop and catch him in the act, and...well...I suppose we did." She examined the rafters of the common room in an effort to avoid looking Ron in the eyes, a tactic that worked for all of five minutes seconds, at which point she couldn't ignore the gales of hysterical laughter. Ron was nearly doubled over, trying to muffle himself with a cushion. "It's not funny," she said crossly.

He gasped and removed the cushion. "Oh, Merlin, yes, it is! You actually thought...oh, god..."

"Well, what were we supposed to think?"

He shook his head and wiped tears out of his eyes. "Didn't you ever think to ask me?"

Hermione blinked at him, until Harry started pounding his head on the table. She pulled him off it and sighed. "All right, look. I'm sorry I didn't ask you if you were being stalked by Malfoy. I'm sorry we walked in on you. Are you going to apologize for not mentioning you were...with him?"

"Shagging him," Harry corrected.

Ron sighed in exasperation. "What was I supposed to say? 'Good morning, everyone, lovely weather out today, did you finish your Charms homework? Oh, by the way, I'm shagging Draco Malfoy. Pass the sausage'?"

"Well, of course not, but you could have said something to somebody!"

They glared at each other for a few minutes, until Ron rubbed his eyes and sighed. "All right, look, I'm sorry I never mentioned it. Can we go to bed now? I'm knackered."

"Of course. Fine." Hermione stood up, and dragged Harry to his feet. "Let's just...I mean...don't...oh, forget it."

Ron took Harry from her and guided him up the stairs; she heard their footsteps pause halfway up as Harry said, "See? I told you we weren't trying to kill you." Sighing, she went to her own dormitory and changed into her nightgown. The other girls were already asleep, and Parvati was snoring slightly.

She climbed into bed, pushing Crookshanks gently to the side. He gave her a reproachful look, but crawled up onto her chest and rested his head on her neck. "It's been a very weird day, Crookshanks," she said sleepily. "Do you know what I'm going to do when I wake up in the morning?"

He opened one eyes as if to ask, "What?"

"I'm going to murder that tow-headed little fiend..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No mustelids were injured during the production of this fanfic. Harry's "puppet show" was taken directly from Zorb, who said it first. Hermione's last line is adapted from H.P. Lovecraft's short story "Herbert West: Reanimator".


End file.
